


impact

by trash king murphamy (blackmaggiecat)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bellamy is a psychic's son, High School, ITS WILD, M/M, Murphy survives a car crash, woohoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-06-16 09:52:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmaggiecat/pseuds/trash%20king%20murphamy
Summary: they were driving. him and his father and mbege. and then the truck came out of nowhere, and john's heart stopped.and then started again. sort of.





	1. prolouge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueparacosm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/gifts), [sapphictomaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphictomaz/gifts).



_this is what he remembers:_

_it was raining, that night. alex is driving, and mbege is in the backseat. the taller boy's head lolled against the window, and his breath smells like whiskey._

_john wants to look anywhere but his lap, but he's a little out of his mind right now, cross-faded on shitty houseparty marijuana and whatever connor had mixed into that cooler and he doesn't know what he'd do if  his bloodshot eyes made contact with his father's so he just stares at his hands in his lap instead. and it's fine._

_alex never was a shouter; he was always the soft, forgiving man to cancel out catherine murphy's harsh disciplinarianism, but as the car flew between the potholes on the unpaved streets of southern dropship valley, he almost wished that he would start yelling, or do something, anything, other than stare straight at the road with that disappointed look in his eyes, the window rolled down and letting the rain in so he could exhale his cigarette smoke out into the night._ _later, john would hold onto that stare._

_he wished he remembered more details of that night. he wishes he remembered what was important. instead all he can conjure is the look in his fathers eyes, and the smell of rain and whiskey and nicotine._

_and then mbege is vomiting in the backseat, and alex turns around for a brief second to direct him to the plastic puke bags and god, the truck came out of nowhere._

_everything is patchy after that. he is in the car, and then he is not. he is outside, he is crawling, he is almost safe, and then the car explodes and that is all there is._


	2. chapter one

Murphy wakes up in a cold sweat. He's always waking up in a cold sweat, it seems, and frankly he could mortgage a house with the amount of money that went into laundry in the four months since the acci- since  _it_ happened. He used to scream when he woke, as well, but he'd learnt to let the sound die between clenched teeth. He used to do it so he wouldn't wake his mother, who barely had time to sleep in between the seemingly full-time occupation of being a grieving widow and her actual occupation of selling overpriced clothes to rich people, but now that she was always drunk and passed out and by no means waking up for something as trivial as her son's emotional agony, he just did it out of reflex.

He knows he won't be able to sleep again. His skin feels like it's stretched too tight across his bones, like he's about to shed it, and he can still feel the icy cold of his dream, and his vision swims like he's drunk. He shakes his head, like that'll make the doubles go away, and flicks his light-switch on. He sighs in relief as light flood his room.

His clock reads 6:46, which makes tonight the new record of the longest he's slept without the pills. Small victories.

The hospital psychiatrist, a stout woman with an eyebrow piercing and a non-work-appropriate tattoo that looked like an artichoke but was apparently a lotus, had told him that things would return to normal after a while, but after four months he could still barely sleep through the night. The second psychiatrist, a wild man named Theolonious, of all things, hopped him up on just about every sleep aid and antidepressant and encouraged to find some sort of spiritual healing through meditation, and then promptly attempted to sleep with his widowed mother. The most recent psychiatrist, Dr. Kane, was okay. He didn't drug him up like his predecessor, just told him to control his breathing and keep a dream journal. Which, to his credit, he had tried to, but the dream was always the same, so he stopped writing it down.

Instead, he sloppily untangles himself from the mess of his sweat-stained sheets, each of his limbs feeling like lead, and stumbles to the door as covertly as he can manage to check on his mother. Not to ask her permission, but to make sure she's truly as knocked out as she usually is. She wouldn't actively keep tabs on him, per se, but if she came into his room to find him missing she would wreck havoc on the small apartment complex in order to locate him. But the second he exits his room, he knows this is a non-issue. The TV is softly blaring George Lopez, and Catherine Murphy's far-too-thin lips are parted in gentle snoring, the rising and falling of her collarbones disturbing the droplets of cheap liquor pooled against her neck.

She looks different than before  _it_ happened. Despite her habit of spending her free time passed out drunk (right up there with reminding her only living relative that she wishes he wasn't labelled as such), dark shadows blotted themselves underneath her eyes. She'd lost weight; she'd always been short and thin, borderline wispy, but now Murphy is almost certain that he could wrap his thumb and middle finger around the entire circumference of her bicep. She looked like she didn't eat enough, but it was hardly a mystery as to why. Even without coming near, Murphy knows that he would be able to smell their welfare checks on her breath in the shape of whatever alcohol was her flavor of the week. 

Something about the idea of that sends an icy shock through Murphy's chest, and he dipped back into his room, not bothering to close the door as he bounded right through the room and out of his window to the fire escape. The brisk October air electrified his body as he slumped against the metal laddering, grateful to be free of the hazy environment of his own apartment. 

Like clockwork, he waits a little under a minute before he hears the  _bang_ of heavy boots clambering down the metal fire escape. He doesn't bother looking up, just runs a hand through his hair as the owner comes onto his landing. He feels rather than sees her as she sits down next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee, her cold hand brushing against his own as she makes herself comfortable.

"Do you ever sleep?" he asks as she finally settles in, and she huffs out a laugh. He instinctively turns his head a little farther away, and immediately feels bad. Emori has been a good friend to him, but it doesn't change the fact that her breath smells like she's been living on a diet of exclusively garlic and five-bean chili. 

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," she responds, and Murphy huffs out a laugh. She isn't laughing, but she's a very deadpan person. She has about four modes: tired, more tired, still more tired, and deliriously happy. When she was in one of her three tired settings, she 's more likely to say something's funny than laugh at it. In this case, she's not laughing, but gently knocks her knee against his to show she appreciates him doing so, and he turns his head to see her smiling.

Emori isn't the prettiest girl Murphy had ever met, but she sure was something to behold. Her features all stand out harshly in her face, with a strong jaw and severe cheekbones and big, rounded eyes, but when he catches a glimpse out of the corner of his eye he swears she looks soft, willowy, almost like you'd never really be able to distinguish her if not for the giant black tattoo that snaked itself across her face. Whenever Murphy sees her, she's always wearing some variation of the same thing: layers on layers of thin, dirt-caked jackets with their too-long sleeves stretching over her hands, dark jeans, and a pair of combat boots whose soles were worn through. Although she swears up and down that she lives in an apartment a few floors up with her brother, Murphy isn't dumb. The homeless population in north Arkadia is staggering, and he'd seen more than enough kids their age doing tricks on the street to get a few bucks, and he'd been to enough parties in abandoned squatter houses to recognize what she is.

"You're up late," she comments, drawing him out of his daze. There's a playful gleam in her eye, and he knows that the comment was intended as a joke, so he indulges her.

"Slept a whole seven hours," he replies, "dear old mama will be so proud." 

"You're supposed to get eight hours of sleep a night."

Murphy laughs outright. "You don't sleep at all, hypocrite."

She jabs him with her elbow, and they lapse into silence, listening to the sounds of sirens and Mrs. McDonnell a few doors down shouting at her husband for whatever he could have possibly been doing wrong at this hour of the morning. 

As the sun is finally cracking over the Domino Sugar building, Murphy finally gets his guts out of his throat and tells her: "I had the dream again."

She nods. "Anything new?"

"It felt..." He starts, but then he's not sure what the right thing to say is. The dream has always seemed like more of a  _feeling_ than a situation, even though when he describes it there were things going on, and this time it had seemed more urgent. But he can't explain that to Emori, who has never had the dream, so he lies instead. "It felt the same."

She nods, and dips her head to his shoulder in a brief, comforting touch before she stands up.

"It's almost 7:30, you should get ready for school," she informs him, though she has no clock and he doubts she's a human sundial, before she hoists herself back up the fire escape and effectively out of sight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is emori ooc? yes. but will it be sort of important down the line? also yes.


	3. chapter two

His mother is still asleep as he finishes getting ready, despite the sun reaching through the still-open window and onto her upturned face. He tries to be quiet, grabbing once-worn clothes from their places on his bedroom floor instead of chancing the harsh screech of his noisy dresser drawers, and he sprays himself with Lysol as if that will create a facade of freshly washed fabrics. The only sound in the apartment as he gathers his things is his mothers light snoring and the sound of his own rumbling stomach, desperate to devour the food that it believes to be hidden in their barren kitchen cabinets.

He contemplates waking her as he struggles to open the door (the key is to push it up before pushing it open so the hinges don't squeak), but he decides against it. If she wakes now, she'll try to go to work, stumbling and cranky and hungover, and they can't afford for her to lose another job. She'll be okay here today, he'll call her work like he always does and tell them that her poor son - you know? The one who was in the accident? - had some health issue last night and poor thing, he missed his father so bad. Her boss, an older gentleman with waning eyesight but bottomless patience, would give her the day off. So he casts one more gaze at her graying hair over the top of the armchair, and then practically sprints out of the squeaking door and down the hall, not stopping until he was halfway down the first flight of stairs and  _just then_ realizing that his shoes were still untied.

He isn't in the lobby yet when his ride arrives, but he can tell the second it gets outside. Clarke's arrival is always announced by a deafening chorus of honking cars outside, and he skulks through to patronizing glares of his neighbors until he can see the blue Prius stopped squarely in the middle of the street, the driver's blonde head leaning out the window to shout obscenities at every one of the other disgruntled drivers. Murphy would say that expensive dye job and dangling pearl earrings made her stick out like a sore thumb in his crumbling, lower-class neighborhood, but even the metaphorical sore thumb would probably stick out less. He rushes himself into her backseat in hopes that it would prompt her to pull her head (and, in turn, her obscenity) back into her car.

Predictably, she yanks her head back into the car, hair slightly askew, and mouth still slinging very vaguely classist comments about everyone currently operating a car in Murphy's neighborhood. She continues to grumble as she removes her foot from the brake and practically slams it onto the gas, taking off at debatably safe speeds back uptown. She leaves the windows rolled down, and the overpowering scent of marijuana pours in with the fresh air as they pas Joey's "pharmacy", but how much of the weed-smell came from the store and how much came from Jasper, the skin-and-bones stoner propped up half-asleep in the seat next to Murphy, is up for debate. 

"Jesus, Griffin, get a grip," a deep voice demands from the front passenger seat demanded, "keep driving like this is going to get us all killed."

Murphy snorts, and Bellamy Blake turns his dark eyes on Murphy is some semblance of a glare. Murphy disregards that outright; Bellamy is angry as a general rule, but his outright distaste for other human beings only extends to the bourgeois and people wearing "Make America Great Again" hats in school. As predicted, Bellamy's faux-glare tones down to something a little easier on the eyes, but harder to swallow: pity. It happens every time someone made a joke about Clarke's driving when Murphy was in the car; that palpable, painful, "your-father-and-best-friend-died-with-you-in-the-car" pity. It makes Murphy's stomach churn, but he swallows the gross feeling, letting the comment - and stare - roll off his shoulders.

Clarke, queen Goddess of dead dad issues, clearly caught the awkward vibes, switching the conversation with ease. "Murphy, have you eaten today?" 

It isn't a rhetorical question, but it also doesn't really need an answer. Before Murphy can open his mouth all the way to respond, Clarke is nudging Bellamy, who tore his bagel neatly in half, shoving it in Murphy's direction. 

"I'm good, man," Murphy attempted to resist, but the older boy just shook the bagel in a way that made droplets of melted butter drip onto Murphy's jeans so he's forced to grab it for the sake of his general appearance. Bellamy smirks a little from the front seat, and Murphy kicks the back of his seat. The movement disturbs Jasper, who's to baked to do much more about it but change the shoulder he's leaning on from Monty's shoulder to Murphy's. So now he not only has butter on his pants, but Jasper is drooling on his shoulder, and somehow that makes Bellamy laugh outright. Murphy tries to glower through the mouthful of buttery goodness.

At the speed Clarke drives, it makes then barely fifteen minutes to get across town to the school, during which Murphy finishes the original bagel portion as well as the other half, which Bellamy offered without being asked and with a firm refusal to be denied. Clarke had clucked her tongue approvingly at that. Clarke and Bellamy are the best couple Murphy knows, despite the fact that they weren't dating. Once they put their prides to the side, they'll probably get married and have sixteen kids and a dog and die at the same time. It sickens him a little, for more reasons than one.

The rest of the day is uneventful until fourth period. It's Spanish, which is essentially his throwaway class. The teacher, Senora Marquez, is the sweetest little lady he'd ever met in his life, and he takes endless advantage of her willingness to bump his grade if he comes in and cries in front of her. He feels bad about it, really, but with nightmares plaguing his dreams and taking care of his mother interrupting the only nights he could get to sleep, he needed a class to sleep through. Sra. Marquez was just unlucky enough to be easy to take advantage of, and in the habit of giving out participation "A"s to students who didn't participate.

He's midway through class when it starts. It doesn't even start with a stomachache. He feels a headache, piercing in the space between his eyebrows. He tries to shake it off, but the movement makes him dizzy enough that all he can really do is put his head down on his desk, using his arms to shield himself from the light. A minute or so later, his throat starts to feel weird; itchy and tight. He wants to scratch at it, but that would mean letting light into his headspace, and his head has moved on from the sharp pain of his headache to pounding incessantly. It almost feels like his brain is a thousand little men, each pounding at his skull to escape. The pain of it makes him breathe a little harder, which is apparently too much for his dying throat, which feels like it's closed in completely. By the time his stomach begins to ache and bubble, he's in agony. 

He raises his hand and tries to stop it from shaking, choking out "Puedo ir al baño?"

Sra. Marquez doesn't even glance his way before dismissing him with a quick flick of her hand. "Si, rapido." The words are barely out of her mouth before he's out of his seat, not bothering to grab a pass as he books it toward the bathroom.

It isn't even just his stomach in upheaval, though it is; he feels his whole body shaking, all his muscles feel like they're churning, like his entire body wants to vomit out its' contents. He slams open the bathroom door and bypasses Jasper juuling next to the urinal, bee-lining for the toilet just as his stomach contents return to the outside world. 

He retches for well over a minute and he's fairly certain this is what death feels like. He feels sweat beading against his forehead, and tears in his eyes. What has he eaten? Half of Bellamy's bagel. He had leftover Chinese for dinner last night, but neither of those foods usually made him sick. He filed it away under "things to think about when I'm no longer puking my intestines out".

When his stomach finally decides to start acting like a stomach again, he leans groggily against the disgusting, disgusting toilet seat, ignoring the fact that he's in a public school and the janitorial staff aren't exactly making a fortune. He's sitting there, wondering if it's worth it to go back to class when he very clearly should be going to the nurse when the distinct smell of mango vape juice fills his nostrils, followed by Jasper's quiet exclamation of "Holy shit, bro, what  _is_ that?"

Murphy snorts. "Vomit, I'm assuming," he responds, lifting himself off of the toilet seat that probably just gave him fifty thousand face-STDs to stare into the toilet bowl. But instead of regurgitated bagel and Chinese food, or stomach acid, the toilet bowl was full to nearly the brim with pitch-black liquid. As he stares at it through wet eyes, it almost looked like it was oozing, bubbling, but there was no way. He doesn't know what kind of wacked-out virus this was, but he doesn't have the time or energy for it. He reaches over to get rid of the evidence down the toilet. The effort, apparently, is a lot for him, considering the only thing he hears is the sound of the toilet flushing and Jasper saying, "Yo, Murphy, are you- hey!" before he doesn't hear much of anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my brand-new au, bitches. it's gonna have murphamy, but its largely murphy-centric. it's gonna be Sad and murphy is gonna Suffer and you're all gonna put up with it because this tag is so goddamn dry. enjoy.


End file.
